Breaking in Speakers

So I got some new speakers for my 4x10, and decided I should "break them in a little." What I decided to do was cut all the highs, have the mid and lows flat, and just play 12 fret octaves at medium volume, and slowly raise the volume, and eventually play open. I did this for about 15 minutes, then played as normal.

The way I like to break in speakers is just to run my CD player through them at just below normal volume for around 10-20 hours. Then be careful with them for another 10 and then boom, you're good to go.

Fred312bProof that gear doesn't make you a better playerSupporting Member

There's no such thing as a break-in period. Speakers may change over time, but it's not like there's a point of reference or anything that has to be reached by breaking in.

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that depends who you ask- i used to work in a high end stereo store and we used to leave new speakers on overnight with something with great range (good highs, mids and lows). another good way i read in a stereo magazine is to run a good dvd through 'em too... i don't know the scientific formula for how long you need to do it or anything (there's a lot of voodoo in audio stuff) but i do believe speakers break in... doesn't acme recommend breaking their speakers in (not breaking in their speakers )?

i recently got a brand new, out-of-the-box amp - was told to break them in by playing through it for at least 10 hours at low-to-medium volume (the manual said it would greatly increase the amp's life)

i just ran a CD thru it with some highs cut for a whole day...but yeh, it does seem to make sense to break brand new speakers in...just like a new car i guess

In my Eden 210XST manual I have a small section called WARNING! BREAK/IN PERIOD. It says the cabinet should be played at a low/moderate for approx. two hours as this helps the voice coils to "seat" themselves (the manual's words).

Just pump some low volume pink noise through them for 12 hours or so...

white noise

White noise is a sound that contains every frequency within the range of human hearing (generally from 20 hertz to 20 kHz) in equal amounts. Most people perceive this sound as having more high-frequency content than low, but this is not the case. This perception occurs because each successive octave has twice as many frequencies as the one preceding it. For example, from 100 Hz to 200 Hz, there are one hundred discrete frequencies. In the next octave (from 200 Hz to 400 Hz), there are two hundred frequencies.

White noise can be generated on a sound synthesizer. Sound designers can use this sound, with some processing and filtering, to create a multitude of effects such as wind, surf, space whooshes, and rumbles.

Pink noise is a variant of white noise. Pink noise is white noise that has been filtered to reduce the volume at each octave. This is done to compensate for the increase in the number of frequencies per octave. Each octave is reduced by 6 decibels, resulting in a noise sound wave that has equal energy at every octave.

On the other hand, it probably couldn't hurt either. Better safe than sorry. The comment earlier made about the voice coils seating themselves make a certain amount of sense as does the concept of limbering up the cone surrounds.

Breaking in the speakers changes the stiffness of the suspension system and is well documented (and measured) in the speaker design world.
Check out "The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook" by Dickason for a easy read about how to measure the effect if you really want to do your own testing and see if it is real.

You can actually measure changes in the T-S parameters from NIB to after being used. I don't have any example numbers that I can recite at the moment, sorry. But if you design to what you measure initially, you may get a surprise.

After that initial shift they seemed to stabilize.... Maybe its just another Celestion oddity, like the old guitar speakers that smelled exactly like tomcat pi$$.

Most other brands are much less obvious, although I am sure there is some effect.

Proof is when the guy who builds them tells you in great detail about how people who don't break them in sufficiently tend to crease or blow their woofers from early overexcursion - me included. It's even in the Acme owner's manual.